38
Queen City Heritage
Winold Reiss: A Pioneer
of Modern
American Design
C. Ford Peatross
Cincinnati is especially fortunate in having
not only one of Winold Reiss's most ambitious commissions, but also one of the few that survives, for the nature
of most of his work in commercial architecture and interior design was necessarily ephemeral. As a public building,
Cincinnati's Union Terminal is also exceptional in Reiss's
work, although the many restaurants, hotels, and shops
which he designed were at one time a part of the daily
lives of thousands of people. So prolific was Reiss, that by
1940, not counting the Cincinnati station, in any one day
over 30,000 Americans lived, met, ate, drank, or were
entertained in a Reiss designed interior. Today
Cincinnatians are alone in this privilege. "Masterpieces" of
architecture, landscape, and interior design too often lie
outside the paths of ordinary people. Historians of vernacular and commercial architecture are now directing
increasing attention to the transitory structures which constitute such an important part of our built environment,
and which play significant roles in the quality of our lives.
Although most of his work as an architect and interior
designer has disappeared, during four decades of practice
Winold Reiss set a course that in considerable measure
contributed to and enlivened American design. This is an
introduction to that largely unrecognized journey.
The Atlantic liner S. S. Imperator docked in
Hoboken, New Jersey, on October 29,1913, bringing with
it from Hamburg three ambitious young men: Fritz
Winold Reiss, Oscar Wentz, and Alfons Baumgarten; each
of whom played a role in introducing modern design to
the United States. One was a young, brash, energetic, and
talented artist fresh out of Munich, then one of Europe's
thriving art centers. Fritz Winold Reiss (1886-1953) was
well-prepared to make his mark in the New World.1
Trained by his father, the artist Fritz Reiss, and at both the
Royal Academy of Art, under the famous painter and
sculptor Franz von Stuck, and the Kunstgewerbcschuh
(School of Applied Arts), under the equally notable poster
artist Juliez Diez, he represented the coming together of
two great streams of artistic endeavor, the fine arts and
commercial art, that was a notable characteristic of his
time. The professions of commercial and industrial design
as we know them today developed out of this stimulating
convergence. We are just beginning to study and to recognize the multiple contributions which Reiss made to
American architecture and design. He helped to prepare
the way for figures like Raymond Loewy, Norman Bel
Geddes, Donald Deskey, and Walter Dorwin Teague,
among others who established the United States as a
world leader in commercial and industrial design during
the 1930s. In 1913, however, this country was on the distant edges of the coming wave of change.
MUNCHEN 19°8
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ANCEWANDTE KUNST-HANDWERK-f NDU5TRIEHANDEL-OFFENTUCHEEINRICHTUNCEN-SP
Figure 1
C. Ford Peatross is curator of
Architecture, Design and
Engineering Collections,
Prints and Photographs
Division, the Library of
Congress where he is currently directing a new project
to establish a center for
American Architecture,
Design, and Engineering. He
is a member of the board of
editors of Buildings of the
United States and the
Octagon Committee of the
American Institute of
Architects.
Reiss studied at the
Kunstgewerbeschule (School
of Applied Arts), under the
notable poster artist Juliez
Diez. (Figure #1)
Credits for the illustrations in
this article are listed on
page 57.
Summer/Fall 1993
It is useful to observe that Reiss's education
in Munich's Kunstgewerbeschule reflected a turn-of-thecentury optimism that artistic talent and energy could and
should be productively channeled to the creation of the
objects of everyday life; that the lives and work of artists,
artisans, and workmen should be more connected; and that
both commerce and the human spirit would profit from
such association. Riding the crest of the Industrial
Revolution, during the second half of the nineteenth and
the first half of the twentieth centuries, study and training
in the applied arts were the object of considerable attention in Great Britain, Europe, and, finally, in the United
States, where industrial design ultimately emerged as an
independent profession. The career of Winold Reiss was
congruent with the birth of that profession from the seeds
of the Arts and Crafts and Applied Arts movements. But it
was more. Reiss brought to his work not just the principles
and skills afforded by his excellent training, but his own
artistic talent, allowing him to create works whose energy
and imagination continue to speak to us today, bringing
both pleasure and inspiration. The decorative vocabulary of
Vienna's Secession movement, the bold colors and forms
of German Expressionism, and the conventions and
abstractions of African art, all evident in Reiss's early work,
were to be transformed into something distinctly
American.
From across the Hudson River, Reiss and his
companions were greeted by the daring new skyscrapers of
the world's greatest city. Considerably less daring was New
York's attitude towards modern art, notably demonstrated
several months earlier in its reaction to the famous Armory
Show. American discomfort extended to the realm of commercial design as well, as they were soon to discover.
Undaunted, perhaps even challenged by this unreceptive
atmosphere, Reiss and one of his fellow passengers, Oscar
Wentz, set out almost immediately to introduce the bold
colors and daring forms of Modern Decorative Art 2 to the
land of the Puritans. Wentz possessed something that was
completely at home on these shores: a keen entrepreneurial
spirit which spurred him to develop a wide range of projects. The direct result was to provide Reiss with an immediate stimulus and patronage for his work, including
graphic and interior design, launching his career and
advancing Wentz's.
Oscar Wentz served as an avid propagandist
and promoter of modern commercial art. Within two years
of his arrival he founded the Society of Modern Art and
began to publish its official organ, the Modern Art
A Pioneer of Modern Design
39
Figure 2
Collector (M.A.C.) (1915-18). Unprecedented in the quality
and style of its printing, as well as its subject matter, the
M.A. C. served as the main tool to promote the goals of the
Society of Modern Art and the work of its members.
Wentz simultaneously attempted to popularize the Art
Poster Stamp in this country and enlisted the support of
executives in the infant motion picture industry interested
in improving American poster design.3 He was described in
1929 as "a pioneer of modern art in this country and the
first president of the Society of Modern Art, an early group
of modern artists."4
Reiss played a key role in the production of
the early issues of the M.A.C. , so much so that one wonders when he had time to sleep or eat during its first six
months of publication. This work drew upon his experience in creating the first issue of a periodical entitled
Junjvolk while still in Germany.5 From September to
December of 1915, he designed three of the M.A.C.}s first
four covers, much of what was inside, and in large part
established its graphic identity. Particularly Reissian were
the undulating vertical and horizontal lines6 employed in
borders and the slanting or falling letter "S,"7 which later
became hallmarks of his architectural and graphic design
projects. It is revealing to compare Reiss's first M.A.C.
cover to a poster designed in 1908 by Julius Diez, his professor at Munich's Kunstgewerbeschule,* to promote an
important applied arts exhibition Diez silhouettes a bold
It is revealing to compare
Reiss's first M.A.C. cover
(Figure #2) to a poster
designed in 1908 by Julius
Diez, his professor in Munich.
(Figure #1)
40
Figure 3
Queen City Heritage
of conservative businessmen. Reiss's first architectural
commission, the Busy Lady Bakery of 1915 (described in
1939 as the first modern store in New York)10 is covered at
length. Emphasis is given to the involvement of the artist
in every aspect of the store's design, from its interior and
exterior architecture, to its advertising and bold blue and
white packaging, all illustrated in the M.A. C. Reiss worked
out the spare but elegant essentials of the interior design
scheme for the Busy Lady in a small design sketch whose
strong lines, squarish grids, and punctuation of broad flat
surfaces with simplified decorations recall the work of Josef
Hoffmann and the Vienna Secession and at the same time
establish a recurring theme in his own work.
The look of the M.A. C. was dramatic, bold,
colorful, self-consciously modern, and German. This
augured both good and ill for the fate of the publication,
for Germany, and Munich in particular, led the world in
printing technology and graphic design. The pages of the
M.A.C. are filled with the advertisements of printing firms
and suppliers throughout the United States with German
origins: the Stockinger, A. Bielenberg, and ZeeseWilkinson Companies of New York; Berger and Wirth of
Brooklyn, Charles Hellmuth of New York and Chicago;
the Manternach Engraving Company of Hartford; F.
Weber & Co. of Philadelphia; the Meinzinger Studios in
Detroit; Frank B. Nuderscher of St. Louis; and the
symbol of the genius of the arts applied to the tools of
industrial production against the outline of Munich's
Frauenkirche, while Reiss places a colorful parrot and
abstracted flower vases against a bright pink background
into which they partially blend. Both employ bold lettering
and simplified forms, large expanses of flat and contrasting
colors; and strong lines: the distinctive attributes of the
German Poster Style.9 While the first M.A.C. cover was
self-consciously sophisticated and represented a tour-deforce of the lithographic art, the tenth (ca. 1917) shows us
another, quite different side of his artistic personality, the
love of primitive natural motifs and the ability to reduce
and simplify them to essential patterns of form, line, and
color. The bird and flower motif becomes a signature in
much of Reiss's later work. The pages of the M.A.C. also
are useful in providing evidence of the diversity and success
of his beginnings. The start of a long career as an educator
is signaled by a witty promotion for the Winold Reiss
School in which an artistic cherub armed with a dripping
brush tames a bucking tube of tempera. A more restrained
presentation of the importance of good lettering in advertising was clearly designed to appeal to a different audience
m i ALL INrOflMATIOM
INQtISOE-M REiss 1 STUDIO
96FIFTHAVE*
OO ATTME
81 JtOOTHEPHAVt:
NEWYORK
Figure 4
The tenth M.A.C. cover represented quite a different side
of Reiss's artistic personality,
the love of primitive natural
motifs and the ability to
reduce and simplify them to
essential patterns of form,
line, and color. (Figure #3)
The start of a long career as
an educator is signaled by a
witty promotion for the
Winold Reiss School in which
an artistic cherub armed with
a dripping paint brush tames
a bucking tube of tempera.
(Figure #4)
Summer/Fall 1993
A Pioneer of Modern Design
Barnhart Brothers of Chicago, St. Louis, Washington,
Dallas, Omaha, Kansas City, Saint Paul, and Seattle;
among others. Chicago's Society of Poster Art styled itself
as specializing in the "Munich System" of designing and
printing. None of this commercial goodwill, however, was
to prove equal to the rising tide of anti-German feeling
related to the First World War (1914-1918), which the
United States entered in its last year. Modern German Art
already well on his way to becoming one of New York's
leading restauranteurs. Within a decade after his arrival in
New York, Otto J. Baumgarten came to preside over a
small empire of the city's finest restaurants, including the
Voisin, the Crillon, the Esplanade, and the Elysee.12
Initially trained at his father's restaurant in Vienna, the
hearth of the modern movement in architecture,
Baumgarten was not blind to the commercial advantages
41
TO BUIINCSS
ANDMORC
BUSINESS TO
JMBT
r i H T I WINOfcDMEIH
MODEDI
LETTEI
VEPTIII.
Figure 6
had no place in a nation whose army grew from 160,000 to
3,500,000 between 1916 and 1918 and was rationing meat
and sugar in order to stop another sort of Teutonic offensive.11 The final issue of the M A C , published in 1918, put
forward its brand of Modern Art as European rather than
heavily German, and promoted the third Liberty Loan and
the patriotic involvement of all artists, but it was to prove
too little, too late.
To return to the last of our Atlantic voyagers, Alfons L. Baumgarten was important primarily for
providing Reiss with an introduction to his brother, Otto,
of good design, and saw the wisdom of using his eating
establishments as a proving ground for Reiss's work in
interior decoration, for which they provided a highly visible and suitable stage. The first Restaurant Crillon of 191920, located at 15 East 48th Street, caused a sensation
referred to repeatedly over the next two decades.13 Called
the "first modernistic interior in America,"14 it featured
flat, starkly delineated wall surfaces; prismatic hues; and
large, simplified decorations, presaging the "super-graphics" of our own time. All are evident in one of Reiss's
small design sketches, where the bird-and-flower theme of
the decorative wall panels recall the second cover of the
M.A.C. and the avant-garde furnishings are right out of
Vienna. Another Baumgarten enterprise, the manufacture
of chocolates, led to the creation of establishments such as
the Baumgarten Cafe Viennois and Baumgarten Viennese
Bonbonniere, for which, in addition to architecture, Reiss
designed packaging and even the delivery truck,15 continuing a pattern begun with the Busy Lady Bakery and
extending throughout his career.16 Otto Baumgarten also
collaborated with Reiss as a consultant in restaurant management, bringing his expertise to many other American
restaurant projects.17
A more restrained presentation of the importance of
good lettering in advertising
was clearly designed to
appeal to a different audience
of conservative businessmen.
(Figure #5)
Reiss worked out the spare
but elegant essentials of the
interior design scheme for
the Busy Lady in a small
design sketch with strong
lines, squarish grids, and
punctuation of broad flat sur-
)istinctive lettering am
is an essential of we successful advertisement«
If should be massed m
some geometric shape
or decorative manner
to Form a port of the
whole ctesidh • » •
Figure 5
faces with simplified decorations. (Figure #6)
.*•
v
•
-
, ; ; . • /
DESIGNED BY F. W. ft'.
-
•
•
•
Figure 7
DECORATION
Figure 8
Reiss's first architectural
commission, the Busy Lady
Bakery of 1915 (described in
1939 as the first modern store
in New York) is covered at
length. The artist was
involved in every aspect of
the store's design. He
designed its interior and exterior architecture, as well as its
advertising and bold blue and
white packaging. (Figures #7
and 8)
A Pioneer of Modern Design
Summer/Fall 1993
Figure 9
The Crillon Restaurant, called
the "first modernistic interior
in America," featured flat,
starkly delineated wall surfaces; prismatic hues; and
large, simplified decorations,
presaging the "super-
graphics" of our own time.
All are evident in one of
Reiss's small design
sketches. (Figure #9)
43
44
Queen City Heritage
Wentz's M.A.C. and Baumgarten's Crillon
commissions were key factors in the first decade of Reiss's
design career in America, paving the way for increasing
success during the 1920s, out of which he emerged as a
well known figure in American interior decoration and textile and furniture design. It was a decade framed by design
commissions for two important hotels, the Alamac and the
St. George.
Harry Latz, the developer of the Hotel
Alamac,18 gave Reiss considerable artistic andfinancialfreedom in its decorating scheme, to notable effect. The public
rooms of the building were conceived in two very different
styles. In her 1925 article for the International Studio,19 the
critic Margaret Breuning wrote: "One realizes the emphasis of decoration in modern murals in the work of Winold
Reiss, who has done a number of restaurants and most
recently the Alamac Hotel. The Hotel Alamac has many
motifs in its decorations varying with the intended use of
the rooms as well as their shape and size. The mediaeval
room is one of the most effective. Its panels represent picturesque figures of the Middle Ages. The huntsman, the
lady fair and the valiant knight alternating with rich metal
panels elaborately carved. The Congo Room makes use of
the motifs of primitive African sculpture and ornament,
not only in its murals but also in its furnishings down to
the most trivial detail. The effect is remarkably impressive."
Writing almost a decade later about the use of decorative
metalwork in Rockefeller Center, Eugene Clute identified
Reiss's work at the Alamac as the first and best of its type:
"Perhaps the first notable example of this kind of metal
work was the series of large decorative wall panels that
were designed by Winold Reiss for the Hotel Alamac, New
York City, and installed in the grill room when that hotel
was built, ten years or more ago. They were executed in a
combination of metals worked in repousse, including
wrought iron, copper, brass, steel and aluminum. The
craftsmanship was executed by Julius Ormos and Charles
Bardosy. The work represented scenes of the chase, rendered with an admirable sense of decorative values and a
feeling for the technique employed."20 The Architect and
Building News compared the decorative metal panels with
the work of Edgar Brandt, one of the leading artists of the
period.21
sion allowed Reiss to begin to develop a decorative vocabulary that became a key part of his own repertoire and has
remained a popular sub-theme of American restaurants and
nightclub decoration to the present day. Its stylistically
advanced, Cubist-related ideas, are described in New York
1930: "The Congo Room was part of a rooftop restaurant
known as the South African Garden that, according to
Architecture and Building, was destined to appeal to those
craving 'an unusual and garish setting for their meals.'
Elevators whisked diners to a rooftop entrance vestibule
with grass flooring and a straw-covered ceiling. Entered
through the jaws of a vividly painted mask, the restaurant
itself resembled an African village. The theme was carried
out in the chairs and tables and the murals of leopards,
chimpanzees, and snakes. Diners seeking privacy could take
their meals seated at booths made to resemble thatched
huts, which lined the walls and focused on a native 'council
chamber' from which an orchestra blared its jazz. Each
chair back simulated a tribal mask, and the general lighting
emanated from idol masks suspended from the ceilings."22
The decoration of the Alamac's rooms, suites
and corridors were also a part of Reiss's commission, and
they allowed him to draw upon the principles of Modern
Decorative Art as they applied to residential interiors. In a
sketch for a sitting room in one of the hotel's suites we can
see its similarities to a domestic interior published in the
first issue of the M.A.C, part of a feature on the work of
E. H. and G. G. Aschermann, a Viennese team designing
American interiors in the spirit of the Wiener Werkstatten.
Mr. Aschermann was described as having studied with
Josef Hoffmann, and nothing shown belies this. The simple lines of the furniture are emphasized by their black finish, echoing the strong outlines of the baseboard, carpet,
french doors, and window. Wall panels bordered in brilliant blue with bright yellow accents complete the ensemble. Both the Aschermanns' and Reiss's interiors were
unprecedented in American residential architecture of the
period, and would have appeared strikingly modern in the
1930s, as they do, indeed, today. Whereas the Aschermanns'
was advanced, Reiss's interior was more daring and original
in the studied informality of its furniture arrangement, the
use of brilliantly colored accessories to accent an abstract
painting over the mantel, and simplified graphic elements
punctuating the door and wall planes. All of these potentially jarring and clearly stimulating elements are harmoniously combined to create a unified effect. Both embody
precisely the characteristics of modern German decoration
observed by French designers between 1908 and 1910 and
Far removed in both style and distance from
its medieval grill room was the Alamac's daringly conceived Congo Roof, which represented Reiss's and New
York's first treatment of a tropical theme. Drawing on his
knowledge of both Cubism and African Art, the commis-
Summer/Fall 1993
A Pioneer of Modern Design
Figure 10
Figure 11
The decoration of the
Alamac's rooms, suites and
corridors were also a part of
Reiss's commission, and they
allowed him to draw upon
the principles of Modern
Decorative Art as they
applied to residential
interiors. In a sketch for a sitting room in one of hotel's
suites (Figure #10) we can
see its similarities to a
domestic interior (Figure #11)
published in the first issue of
the M.A.C.
45
46
Queen City Heritage
used to define and create their own unique and modern
style.23
Reiss's work in residential interiors during
the 1920s ranged from hotels and apartment buildings to
individual apartments and furniture and fabrics for the
domestic market. Much of it was highly experimental and
innovative in character — including the use of many new
materials: in metal, aluminum and chromium; in fabrics,
synthetic products such as rayon and Du Pont's Fabrikoid
and Nemoursa; and paints and wall coverings like Duco
and Muralart, an early type of Formica. The new types of
finishes, effects (including air-brushing), and colors which
these materials allowed were further extended by the use
of new lighting techniques and fixtures. In addition to
working as a color consultant for Du Pont's Fabrikoid and
Muralart product lines, during this period Reiss designed
new products for many companies: fabrics for Mallinson,
Schumacher, Mosse, Martex, and Shelton Looms; furniture for Thonet and General Fireproofing; lighting fixtures
Urban. Reiss, Paul Frankl, and Donald Deskey were credited with presenting the designs most likely to make "a
practical contribution to an evolving Modernism."24
A few examples illustrate a less practical but
equally sophisticated aspect of Reiss's work in these areas,
the distinctive brand of "zig-zag" modernism which he
evolved during the 1920s, drawing inspiration from native
American motifs.25 Although a boyhood fascination with
native Americans drew him to this country, the artist's first
Western trip, including Montana, Colorado, New Mexico,
and Mexico, did not take place until 1920, followed by a
second and longer stay in Montana in 1927.26 Reiss's academic training in the use of pattern and color made him
highly receptive to native American motifs, which increasingly found their way into his graphic and commercial
design work. The use of either a zig-zag line (chevron) or
row of linked triangles, commonly used in the art of the
Blackfoot and Sioux nations, became a signature of Reiss's
work from the late 1920s onward.27 American, European,
and modern sources all come together in the jagged composition of angles and bright colors which characterized
his 1928 design for the elevator cab of the Seelig and
Finkelstein's Shellball Apartments.28 Although its interior
no doubt rendered vertical travel more stimulating than
most residents of the building ever desired, the design
would have made any one of Prague's Cubist architects
proud. Sketches of metalwork designs, also related to the
Shellball Apartments, demonstrate Reiss's continuing
experiments in the decorative uses of metalwork and the
effects of combining different metals in a single composition. His eager quest to introduce lively colors and imaginative ideas into American furniture design is represented
by a sketch for a dressing-table and bench of complex
angles and contrasting shades of bright yellow, red, blue,
and black, which echo the vocabulary of the De Stijl
movement and challenge any preconceptions concerning
their form.
Figure 12
for Egli; and packaging and advertising for a wide range of
clients. His work was featured in various exhibitions sponsored by New York's leading department stores as well as
the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1928 he joined a
number of leading designers in forming their own design
showcase, the American Designers Gallery, whose first
exhibition was organized by Ely Jacques Kahn and Joseph
The use of either a zig-zag
line (chevron) or row of
linked triangles became a signature of Reiss's work from
the late 1920s onward.
American, European, and
modern sources all come
together in the jagged composition of angles and bright
colors which characterized
his 1928 design for the elevator cab of the Seelig and
Finkelstein's Shellball
Apartments. (Figure #12)
The 1920s also marked Reiss's first commissions outside of the New York area, significantly in the
great mid-western metropolis of Chicago. Holabird and
Root, one of that city's most progressive architectural
firms, was linked to three of these, beginning with murals
for the Apollo Theatre (1922-23) and ending with the
Walden Bookshop in the Michigan Square Building
(1930). Reiss's 1928 interiors for one of Chicago's leading
clubs, the Tavern, which occupied the twenty-fifth floor of
a Holabird and Root skyscraper at 333 N. Michigan
Avenue, were widely praised and publicized, winning him
The Origins of Landscape Architecture
Spring 1993
47
which, with the addition of a thirty-one-story tower by
architect Emery Roth, became the nation's second largest.
As many as 3,500 guests could occupy its 2,632 rooms, and
its many dining facilities were capable of serving up to
9,000 patrons at any one time. Winold Reiss Studios conceived and designed most of the public spaces in the new
Tower Building, which "included the largest indoor swimming pool in the metropolis and the most expensive one
ever built; the largest and most costly banquet facilities in
the world, embracing sixteen magnificent rooms; the
largest hotel ballroom in the world." The architect and historian Robert A. M. Stern has sung the praises of its ballroom, designed to hold over 3,000 people, in the prose
style of Tom Wolfe: "the single most startling interior public space of the time in New York...as completed, with its
myriad of colored lights articulating every facet, the ballroom was a brilliant tour-de-force, a real life version of
movie-modern, a last blaring wail of jazz-age stylishness at
its very best."31 His old friend Oscar Wentz described
Figure 13
a whole new list of admirers and clients from many parts of
the country.29 A contemporary article in The Chicagoan
described his achievement in glowing terms: "Winold
Reiss, a leader in the profession of interior decoration, was
given the commission. He was also given carte blanche,
with John Root, of the building committee, exercising the
power of veto over the designs as they were submitted.
The result speaks for itself. The rooms of The Tavern are
the most brilliant example of modern decorative style in
the country. There is gayety and originality, without eccentric affectation, in every detail. The Tavern, in its physical
aspect, is a work of art. And being modern art, it has a
dynamic quality; it refreshes and stimulates. The visitor to
this Tavern drops down to the street and to everyday life, a
better workman, at whatever craft he practices, than he was
before, because the colors and forms of these rooms have
put a new beat into his pulse and a new vibrancy into his
nerves."30
In 1930 Reiss completed extensive designs
for the vast interiors of Brooklyn's Hotel St. George,
Figure 14
Sketches of metalwork
designs also related to the
Shellball Apartments,
demonstrate Reiss's continuing experiments in the decorative uses of metalwork and
the effects of combining
different metals in a single
composition. (Figure #13)
His eager quest to introduce
lively colors and imaginative
ideas into American furniture
design is represented by a
sketch for a dressing-table
and bench of complex angles
and contrasting shades of
bright yellow, red, blue, and
black. (Figure #14)
48
Queen City Heritage
Reiss's stylish treatment of the entrance to the ballroom:
"Leading to this room is a huge foyer, the feeling of space
in a measure imparted by the 'scaping' of the carpet in
three tones of red with diagonal lines suggesting broad vistas. This same treatment is reflected in the cream ceiling
with bands of red and gold. Indirect light is softly diffused
from the ceiling and columns, casting its warm glow on
the gold and vermilion Muralart walls ornamented at intervals with metal grill work."32 The St. George constituted a
city within a city, a great public arena rivaled only by
Cincinnati's Union Terminal among Reiss's works.
The great building boom of the 1920s, which
had provided Reiss with so many design opportunites and
commissions, came to an abrupt halt with the onset of the
Depression. During the 1930s Reiss's work was more
restricted in range and harder to find. Among his papers is
a portfolio containing dozens of elegant designs proposed
to the Barracini candy company, which Tjark Reiss says
represent his father's attempts to obtain commissions during this period. His prospects improved following the
repeal of Prohibition in December, 1933,33 and a series of
commissions from Henry Lustig for his Longchamps
restaurants34 provided Reiss's career with renewed stimulus
and visibility after 1935.
In addition to their famous culinary offerings, the second generation of Longchamps restaurants
enjoyed some of New York's best locations and represented the height of stylishness: "Longchamps is not naive; its
is daring and sumptuous," declared the critic Talbot
Hamlin in 1939.35 Lavish features introduced by the
Longchamps chain included the extensive use of mirrored
wall surfaces and indirect lighting, complex floor and ceiling levels, table telephone and twenty-four-hour service,
and receding plate glass windows which turned the restaurants into outdoor cafes in good weather. The first (1935)
occupied the ground floor corner of the Chanin Building
diagonally across from the Chrysler Building, with lobby
entrances from both 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue,
while the largest and most successful (1938) was ingeniously arranged on five levels of that icon of American architec-
Figure 15
Winold Reiss Studios conceived and designed most of
the public spaces in the new
Tower Building including the
largest ballroom in the world
which was designed to hold
over 3,000 people.
(Figure #15)
A Pioneer of Modern Design
Summer/Fall 1993
49
Figure 16
ture, the Empire State Building.
The exterior of Reiss's 1941 proposal for a
new bar and roof garden at the 49th Street and Madison
Avenue Longchamps displays the chain's trademark vermillion coloring and lettering, including the falling "S," while
the undulating lines which enliven its canopy and bronze
wall panels recall the early borders of the M.A.C. The
entire effect is not dissimilar to that of the Barracini candy
box already illustrated: the name or sign identifying the
product or establishment has been completly integrated
into its design; it has become a sign rather than simply providing a place for one.
The care given to the smallest details in the
Longchamps projects, as well as a willingness to experiment with the decorative possibilities of new materials, is
demonstrated in a design sketch for the inlaid formica top
Otto Wentz described Reiss's
stylish treatment of the
entrance to the ballroom:
"Leading to this room is a
huge foyer, the feeling of
space in a measure imparted
by the 'scaping' of the carpet
in three tones of red with
diagonal lines suggesting
broad vistas." (Figure #16)
of a bar table. A Longchamps lobby card of the period is a
brilliant exercise in graphic design, exhibiting the same
qualities. It announces "Cocktail Time" in a colorful and
inviting display with lettering punctuated by the same
motif of linked triangles which Reiss had used to architectural effect in the ballroom of the Hotel St. George. The
bold treatment of the interiors of the Longchamps37 can be
observed in a 1946 sketch for the new retail shops of the
57th Street branch. Reiss visibly moves the patron through
a gauntlet of shop windows by means of an undulating
floor pattern and rhythmic frieze in which he returns to his
roots for inspiration, employing motifs almost identical to
those introduced a half-century earlier by Kolomon Moser,
the great Viennese Secession designer, in his own house.38
The success of Lustig's and Reiss's collaboration has been
summed-up in this way: "The Longchamps restaurants
50
Queen City Heritage
Figure 17
brought to a middle-class audience the glittery glamor of
such highly exclusive haunts of New York's cafe society as
the Stork Club and El Morocco...[and] represented the
culmination of a decade's search for an opulent and even
playful modern language of form."39
Following Lustig's sale of the restaurants in
1946, commissions followed for three more Longchamps,
completed between 1950 and 1952. The first, in New York's
Manhattan House, employed Reiss's life-long mastery of
tropical themes to good effect; another, in Washington, D.
C , featured native American murals and decorations; and
the last and least, in Philadelphia, was carried out in a
watered-down Colonial style which clearly indicates a
reduction in Reiss's activity following a stroke in 1951.
Taken as a whole, the Longchamps commissions served a
critical role for Reiss providing him with new design opportunities and placing his work squarely in the public eye.
During the last two decades of his career, the Longchamps
work led to many other new commissions, large and small,
During the 1930s Reiss's
work was more restricted in
range and harder to find.
Among his papers is a portfolio containing dozens of elegant designs proposed to the
Barracini candy company.
(Figure #17)
for the "stylings" of restaurants, hotels, and commercial
establishments in many parts of the country.
By the mid-1940s at least six Reiss-designed
establishments, including the Steuben Tavern, the famous
Lindy's Restaurant, and four of the nine Longchamps,
were within walking distance from Times Square and New
York's Theater district. The average Longchamps was
capable of serving an average of 800 patrons at a time,
while one employed fifty bartenders. Beginning with the
Crillon of 1919-20, for three decades anyone dining well in
the world's greatest metropolis, including thousands of visitors, would have been familiar with, if not aware of,
Reiss's designs. This was also true to a lesser degree in
Chicago, with Reiss interiors at the Tavern Club, the
Palmer House, and the Sherman Hotel; in Los Angeles,
with Mike Lyman's; and in cities such as Holyoke,
Massachusetts, and Allentown, Pennsylvania. In 1949 Reiss
received a commission for Montreal's Chic-N-Coop
Restaurant, conceived, in spite of its name, very much in
Summer/Fall 1993
A Pioneer of Modern Design
Figure 19
Figure 18
The exterior of Reiss's 1941
proposal for a new bar and
roof garden at the 49th Street
and Madison Avenue
Longchamps displays the
chain's trademark vermillion
coloring and lettering, includ-
ing the falling 'S', while the
undulating lines which
enliven its canopy and bronze
wall panels recall the early
borders of the M.A.C.
(Figure #18)
A willingness to experiment
with the decorative
possibilities of new materials,
is demonstrated in a design
sketch for the inlaid formica
top of a bar table.
(Figure #19)
51
52
Queen City Heritage
the elegant spirit of his Longchamps works.40 At the age of
sixty-four he proved himself to be as creative and imaginative as ever, producing stacks of sketches and drawings in
many variant schemes for its exterior, interiors, and graphic
identity.
1. Winold Reiss came to be much better known for his work as a portraitist and muralist. This has been partly responsible for obscuring
his reputation as a commercial artist, to which this analysis attempts
to provide a brief introduction. The stigma which continued to
attach itself to commercial art work in this country often threatened
and sometimes compromised the artist's non-commercial career.
Figure 20
This brief overview is not the place to
attempt any final evaluation of of Reiss's contributions to
American design, but has tried to bring some of them to
more general attention. His introduction of entirely new
uses and types of color; experimentation with new forms
and materials; incorporation of poster-like graphic elements; and integration of native American decorative
motifs represent some of the most promising areas for further study and analysis. It is appropriate to close with a
recent statement by the architect Morris Lapidus, whose
own work is currently the object of renewed appreciation.
His credentials include the practice of architecture in New
York City from 1927 until the early 1960s, providing him a
thirty-year perspective of developments in American
design. Earlier this year, following his return from a lecture
at Yale's School of Architecture, I asked Lapidus if he
remembered Reiss's work and if it had had any effect on
his own.41 Without hesitation, he admitted instances of his
influence and recalled that, as the preceding pages have
attempted to show: "Reiss was way ahead of all of us."
A Longchamps lobby card of
the period is a brilliant exercise in graphic design. It
announces "Cocktail Time" in
a colorful and inviting display
with lettering punctuated by
the same motif of linked
triangles which Reiss had
used to architectural effect in
the ballroom of the Hotel St.
George. (Figure #20)
Reiss's work as a painter and muralist, together with the training and
tJieory of artistic practice which supported it, should not be viewed as
a separate but rather as an integral aspect of his work in architecture
and design. A superb education in one of Europe's most progressive
artistic centers instilled in the young artist a firm and life-long belief
in the unity and equality of the arts of design, and made of him a stalwart soldier in the battle to bring the talents of artists to the service
of a wider range of design problems. The Winold Reiss who disembarked from the S.S. Imperator carried with him to America a willingness to devote as much energy and ability to the design of posters,
magazine covers, advertisements, fabrics, floor coverings, wallpaper,
textiles, furniture, and interiors as to easel paintings or mural decorations. His work in these areas ultimately may prove to have been
more influential than his more traditional artistic endeavors. Tjark
and Renate Reiss have been unfailing in their hospitality, encouragement, and support in regard to my interest in Reiss's design career
and have been very generous in helping to establish a representative
collection of his work in the Prints and Photographs Division of the
Library of Congress. Tjark Reiss, in particular, shares my opinion that
his father's contributions in this area have yet to be suitably recognized. This effort may serve, in some small measure, to correct this
situation. While periodic access to Reiss's archives since 1987 has
allowed me certain insights into his career as a designer, this can only
supplement the years of careful and painstaking documentary investigations represented in Fred Brauen, "Winold Reiss (1886-1953): Color
and Design in the New American Art," (New York, 1980), an indispensable tool for anyone attempting a study of this subject.
2. The cause of Modern Decorative Art is cited repeatedly in the
manifestos published by Reiss and Wentz in the M.A.C. and elsewhere during the next two decades. See "A Word About Modern
Decorative Art," M.A.C. , vol. 1, no. 1 (September, 1915): At no time
A Pioneer of Modern Design
Summer/Fall 1993
Figure 21
Figure 22
The bold treatment of the
interiors of the Longchamps
can be observed in a 1946
sketch for the new retail
shops of the 57th Street
branch. (Figure #21)
Between 1950 and 1952 Reiss
designed three more
Longchamps, the first, in
New York's Manhattan
House. (Figure #22)
53
54
Queen City Heritage
There are no negative qualities in Modern Decorative Art. To put it
slangily, it has the 'punch.' Its color is a joy. Its composition is
impressive; its general suggestive-impression one of strength, force
and character."
10. L. O. Duncan, "The Belle of Yesterday," The Store of Greater New
Tork (August, 1939): "Her lines are no longer modish although when
she was opened to public view in 1915, she was the first modern store
in America. A great howl went up from the designers of that period.
They sneered and said that she was too extreme, almost decadent.
Sneerers told architect Winold Reiss to take her back to Paris."
11. R. R. Palmer and Joel Colton, A History of the Modern World
(New York, 1965), p. 686.
12. Brauen "Winold Reiss," p. 17, reports that Otto Baumgarten
reached New York in 1908, after working in Paris and London, rising
through the ranks to become commis at the Plaza before opening the
3. See Robert E. Irwin, "Posters and Motion Pictures,t Modern Art Restaurant Voisin in 1913.
Collector (M.A.C.) , vol. 1, no. 2 (October, 1915). Irwin was an exec- 13. Brauen, "Winold Reiss," pp. 18, 21, 25-26, has painstakingly traced
utive in the Poster Division of Metro Pictures Corporation.
many of these references. See also Robert A. M. Stern, Gregory
Gilmartin, and Thomas Mellins, New Tork 1930: Architecture and
4. The New York Times Magazine, March 10,1929, p. 14.
Urbanism betweeen the two World Wars (New York, 1987), pp. 283-84:
5. Tjark and Renate Reiss possess a copy of this rare amateur publicaIn 1920 Reiss had pioneered a less scenographic restaurant design in
tion, whose cover, borders, and illustrations were designed by Winold
Reiss in a manner inspired more by the Jugendstil and the work of New York at the Crillon Restaurant at 15 East Forty-eighth Street,
Charles Rennie Mackintosh than the later Munich School. Reiss also which he decorated in what Edwin Avery Park described seven years
later as a "decidedly modern and thoroughly American taste, using
contributed a number of poems to Jungvolk which demonstrate his
flat surfaces, broad and colorful painted decoration, based on the patromantic sensibilities.
6. Friedrich Achleitner, Osterreichische Architektur im 20. terns found in Navajo blankets and Indian pottery."
Jahrhundert, Ein Fiihrer in drei Bdnden , vol. 3, pt. 1 (Vienna:
14. Brauen, "Winold Reiss," p. 25 cites both Beverly Smith in the
Museum fur Moderne Kunst, 1990): 93-94, illustrates comparable disAmerican Magazine 103 (December 1925), pp. 177-78, describing the
tinctive undulating bands employed by the architect Otto Wagner to initial Crillon as "the first really modernistic interior in America,
decorate the exterior of Vienna's Leopoldstadt railway station, ca. which made a great stir and won him [Reiss] other important com1904-1908, showing the motif as a part of the contemporary design
missions," and Margaret Breuning, "Tendencies in mural decoravocabulary. Reiss never visited Vienna, but he employed this motif to
tions," International Studio 82 (December 1925), p. 177-178: "About
decorate the interiors and exteriors of many of his own buildings, six years ago Mr. Reiss decorated the Crillon Restaurant and created
sometimes in mosaic, as in the facade of the Restaurant Longchamps
quite a flutter in the dovecots by his colorful work. Among other feaat 59th and Madison Avenue of 1939.
tures of this building was a room treated in modernistic style and
7. This was perhaps adopted either from the work of his colleague prismatic hues."
Ilonka Karasz or from Frank Nuderscher, who both employed the
15. Brauen, "Winold Reiss," p. 83, n. 40.
motif in early issues of the M.A. C.
16. "Let the Motif be Modern, Advises Expert," An Interview with
8. Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker, eds., Allgemeines Lexikon der Winold Reiss, The Restaurant Man (April, 1931), 14: "When Mr.
Bildenden Kunstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, vol. 9 (Leipzig,
1978), pp. 280-281. Known not only for his posters, Diez provided
illustrations for the famous publication Jugend and designed book
covers and bookplates, advertising art, as well as mural decorations
and mosaics for the new buildings of the University of Munich, the
Wiesbaden Kurhaus, the Nurnberg train station, and other public
buildings.
9. "A Word About Modern Decorative Art," M.A.C. , vol. 1, no. 1
(September, 1915), offers the following description referring to examples which the publication intends to illustrate: "Whether a subject is
treated with the large expanses of flat color technic, generally known
as the German Poster style, or with much detailed work, matters not.
What matters, is the broad and simple feeling which finds its expression in the general effect. If there are many details, they must be subordinated to the effect in such a way that they do not weaken or disturb it." In a subsequent article in the same issue, "Modern
Decorative Art for the Advertiser," by Raymond Cavanaugh, the
author insists that "the claims of Modern Decorative Art for commercial recognition must be given the fullest consideration," exhorting the reader with the confidence of the newly converted: "Let him
[the advertiser] turn to a poster of today, executed in the true spirit
of Modern Decorative Art, and he will find positive virtues only.
has Decorative Art been so much the subject of discussion as at the
present. There are two reasons for this. First, by the revival in
Europe, especially in the German speaking countries, of decorative
art, i.e., of Art in its applied forms. Second, by the misinterpretation
of the words Decorative Art as used in the modern sense of the word
and the misunderstandings arising therefrom....Modern artists wittingly or unwittingly have changed the meaning of the words
"Decorative Art." In their meaning of Decorative Art they seek to
express in a form or series of forms, a certain feeling — this feeling
they call decorative. The feeling expresses itself through strong lines
and broad colors. Sometimes the colors are very bold, even crude and
hard in combination. Sometimes they are soft and harmonious, but
always the same quality runs through all; the general effect is big,
broad, and simple.— The bigger and simpler the effect, the more
decorative the work.
Figure 23
The Manhattan House design
employed Reiss's life-long
mastery of tropical themes.
(Figure #23)
Summer/Fall 1993
A Pioneer of Modern Design
Reiss is called in to design a restaurant, he usually also designs the
furniture and even the menu cards and meal check, for he believes
that all of these combinations are instrumental in expressing the character of the establishment."
17. "Let the Motif be Modern, Advises Expert," An Interview with
Winold Reiss, The Restaurant Man (April, 1931), 15: "The Crillon's
owner, Mr. Baumgartner [sic], incidentally, is a partner of Mr. Reiss
in the restaurant decorating division of the latter's studios. An an
unusually effective combination they make — Mr. Reiss the artist and
decorator and Mr. Baumgartner being a successful restauranteur."
"Winold Reiss Co. Doing Decorations for Alamac," The
who "has made up his mind at the start that he would spare no
expense in making the new Alamac the very finest possible and he has
shown his excellent taste by selecting Mr. Reiss for this important
commission."
19. Margaret Breuning, "Tendencies in mural decorations,"
International Studio 82 (December 1925), pp. 177-178.
20. Eugene Clute, "Today's Craftsmanship in Combining Metals,"
Architecture (October, 1934), pp. 203-205.
21. "A Modern Decorator in New York," Architect and Building
News (November 26,1926), p. 634.
22. Stern, New Tork 1930, p.283.
55
Figure 24
Restauranteur (August 11, 1923), p. 8, stated that the upper
Broadway Building, nearing completion, was decorated by "the
Winold Reiss Decorating Company, of which Otto J. Baumgarten,
the noted restauranteur, is the business manager." Baumgarten was
identified as a partner as well as business manager of the Reiss firm,
and as the "proprietor of the famous Crillon Restaurant...one of the
most beautiful examples of decorating to be found anywhere....When
it is taken into consideration that Mr. Baumgarten is an experienced
hotel and restaurant man who thoroughly understands this business,
his position as general business manager for the Winold Reiss
Decorating Company makes this company especially fitted to handle
satisfactorily all hotel and restaurant work."
18. "Winold Reiss Co. Doing Decorations for Alamac," The
Restauranteur (August 11, 1923), p. 8, identified Latz as a developer
At the age of sixty-four he
proved himself to be as
creative and imaginative as
ever, producing stacks of
sketches and drawings in
many variant schemes for the
exterior, graphic identity, and
23. Yvonne Brunhammer and Suzanne Tise, The Decorative Arts in
France: La Societe des artistes decorateurs, 1900-1942 (New York, 1990):
26: "A dramatic change in the style of the works exhibited in the
salons of the Societe came about as the result of a second manifestation of the Munich Werkstatten — their appearance in Paris at the
Salon d'Automne in 1910. Since 1900 the growing artistic and commercial success of the Werkstatten had been a cause for alarm in
France. There was even more concern after an important applied arts
exhibition in Munich in 1908, when the French delegation, which
included one of the founders of the Societe des artistes decorateurs,
Rupert Carabin, returned to report that the German exhibition represented for France an "artistic and commercial Sedan." The delegation
later reported to a conference on the decorative arts in Nancy that
the long-sought-after modern style had not been born in France, but
interiors of Chic-N-Coop in
Montreal. (Figure #24)
56
Queen City Heritage
in Germany: "The ruling principle that inspires the young German
school is to create harmonious ensembles through a collaboration of
sculpture, painting and architecture, and the group has endeavoured
to realize this by reforming the aesthetics of the home to make the
modern house a combined work of art, a practical construction of
simple and dignified beauty...Thanks to the simplicity which they
intentionally seek, they have succeeded in creating furniture designs
of good quality and irreproachable form that may be executed entirely by machine, so that they are within the reach of modest budgets. It
was after the delegation returned from Munich in 1908 that Frantz
Jourdain...invited the Munich Werkstatten to exhibit in Paris in
1910.... When the Salon opened in October, the Munich group...
filled eighteen rooms with the finest products of modern German
decorative artists organized on the theme of the 'House of an Art
Lover'...the interiors were not particularly innovative, but they
demonstrated a sobriety, unity of design and sophistication that completely surprised the French public. The colour schemes were equally
unexpected: bright oranges, cobalt blue and brilliant greens — hues
virtually unknown in French decoration."
24. Stern, New Tork 1930, p. 338.
"Decorating the Modern Way," Restaurant Management (July,
1929), pp. 37ff.; The American Architect (January 5, 1929), p. 36ff;
and "Art Moderne in Chicago's Tavern Club," National Hotel
Review (April 27,1929), pp. 62ff.
31. New Tork 1930, pp. 214-15: The 11,000-square-feet, thirty-one-feet
high ballroom, was reputedly the largest in the United States, capable
of holding more than 3,000 people.
32. O.W. Wentz, "The St. George Goes Modern: In this largest hotel
of Greater New York are some fine examples of contemporary decoration," The DuPont Magazine (1930), pp. 14-15.
33. Stern, New Tork 1930, pp. 283-84: "After Prohibition's repeal Reiss
designed a white, blue, and black cocktail lounge for the Crillon that
was highly regarded by [Lewis] Mumford, who found it conducive to
drinking yet not 'so exciting that you would get drunk at the first
smell of a Martini. Moreover, the Crillon demonstrates what the
more vital modern architects, like Wright and Oud, always knew: that
architecture designed for our present style of living does not need to
seek its exponents and admirers among the color blind.'"
34. The New York city chain grew from six locations in 1935 to at
least ten in 1946. Fred Brauen, "Winold Reiss," pp. 48-54, 70, has
carefully detailed this evolution.
35. The respected critic and historian Talbot Hamlin drew attention
to Reiss's achievements in the Longchamps restaurants in an article
entitled "Some Restaurants and Recent Shops" in the widely-read
architectural periodical Pencil Points (later Progressive Architecture) 20
(August, 1939), pp. 485-508. Hamlin described the problem of designing a modern restaurant as a difficult one: "to provide the maximum
seating accommodation within a limited area, and also surround the
patrons with an atmosphere which will make them forget the small
amount of space they occupy and give the the illusion, if not of privacy, at least of intimacy, in surroundings which are gay and
cheerful...the idea is to furnish lots of color, to break up the greater
number of surfaces so as to produce an agreeable sense of complexity,
and to use mirrors to create the illusion of increased size" concluding
that the more recent Longchamps, designed by Reiss, "have attained,
its seems to me, a remarkable success."
25."A Modern Decorator in New York," Architect and Building
News (November 26, 1926), pp. 632-34: "For the inspiration of his
decorative motifs, however, Mr. Reiss has paid a good deal of attention to the work of the American Indian and Aztec sculpture.
Probably as a foreigner he surveys the field of American inspirational
sources with a fresh eye, and, like one or two other artists, has been
astonished at the richness of Aztec art which can not only be considered an indigenous but which contain boundless suggestions for
development...Winold Reiss works in his New York studio in conjunction with his brother, who is a sculptor, and who shares enthusiasm for Mexican and Indian work. Both brothers feel that native art
has been neglected in favour of imported details, and that in Indian
work is revealed a sense of pattern which is in itself an inspiration.
Certainly some of the vermillion, yellow and green interiors of the
Crillon restaurants in New York show a strong Indian suggestion."
26. "Winold Reiss - May 1913," typescript biographical sketch,
Collection of Tjark and Renate Reiss.
36. Except for its beginnings in the MA.C, it has been beyond the
27. Stern, New Tork 1930, pp. 283-84: In 1920 Reiss had pioneered a scope of this analyis to present in any depth Reiss's work in the area
of graphic design. He contributed to a number of leading American
less scenographic restaurant design in New York at the Crillon
Restaurant at 15 East Forty-eighth Street, which he decorated in what periodicals, including Scribner's and Fortune, in addition to popular
illustrations, and was a fine printmaker. His most influential work,
Edwin Avery Park described seven years later as a "decidedly modern
however, was in interior design and packaging.
and thoroughly American taste, using flat surfaces, broad and colorful
painted decoration, based on the patterns found in Navajo blankets
37. According to Tjark Reiss, the Longchamps colors of vermillion,
and Indian pottery." The zig-zag or chevron motif first appears comblack, and gold, used here, were the same as those in the silks
monly throughout Reiss's designs for the interiors of the Alamac designed by Reiss for Henry Lustig's racing stable. Brauen, "Winold
Hotel, insinuating itself successfully into both his medieval and
Reiss," p. 48, repeats this.
African themes. After the middle twenties it occurs increasingly in the
38. Vienna 1900, auction catalog, Sotheby's, London (September 23,
distinctive advertisements for the Restaurant Crillon and later in
1993), no. 53, ca. 1902.
those for the Longchamps chain, (fig. 20).
39. Stern, New Tork 1930, p. 285.
40. "le plus chic, le plus luxueux, le plus original lounge de
28. American Architect (February 5,1929), p. 173.
29. As late as 1941 his earlier work on the Tavern Club led to a com- Montreal," Le Canada, December 29,1949.
41. Telephone interview, February, 1993, prompted by similarities
mission from the architectural firm of Neville & Sharp to design a
observed between Reiss's design for the Empire State Building
new bar and dining room for Kansas City's Hotel President. One of
Longchamps (1938) and the interiors of Miami's H o t e l
the architects wrote to Reiss, recalling: "I remember having seen the
murals you did for the Tavern Club in the 333 Michigan Avenue Fontainebleau, designed by Lapidus.
Building in Chicago, some years ago..," Neville & Sharp to Reiss,
February 13,1941, Collection of Tjark and Renate Reiss.
30. Charles Collins, "Floreat Taberna! Temple of the Gay Heart and
the Quickened Mind," The Chicagoan (1928), pp. llff. Other contemporary accounts included: Athena Robbins, "A Town Club
Decorated in the Modern Style," Good Furniture Magazine (March,
1929), pp. 129ff.;"The Tavern Club at 333 North Michigan Avenue,
Chicago," The Architectural Record (February, 1929), pp. 163-66;
Summer/Fall 1993
A Pioneer of Modern Design
57
Illustrations:
Figure #18. Winold Reiss Studios. "Sketch perspective of Proposed
New Bar & Roof Garden, Restaurant Longchamps, 49th Street &
Figure #1. Julius Diez. Miinchen 1908 Ausstellung. Poster. Color lith- Madison Avenue." Graphite and colored pencil on paper, 1920s.
ograph. Poster Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library Collection of Tjark and Renate Reiss.
of Congress.
Figure #19. Winold Reiss. Formica table top. Graphite and tempera
Figure #2. Winold Reiss. Cover, Modern Art Collector (M.A.C.) on paper, 1930s. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of
(New York), vol. 1, no.l, (September, 1915).
Congress. Gift of Tjark and Renate Reiss.
Figure #3. Winold Reiss. Cover, Modern Art Collector (M.A.C.)
(New York), vol. 1, no.10, (ca. 1917).
Figure #4. Winold Reiss. Student Supplement, Modern Art Collector
(M.A.C.) (New York), vol. 1, no.4, (December, 1915).
Figure #20. Winold Reiss Studios. Lobby card: "Cocktail Time,
Restaurant Longchamps." Print, ca. 1935-45. Prints and Photographs
Division, Library of Congress. Gift of Tjark and Renate Reiss.
Figure #5. Winold Reiss. Commercial Art Supplement, Modern Art
Collector (M.A.C.) (New York), vol. 1, no.3, (November, 1915).
Figure #21. Winold Reiss Studios. Retail Store, Restaurant
Longchamps, 57th Street. Graphite and tempera on paper, February
1946. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress. Gift of
Tjark and Renate Reiss.
Figure #6. Winold Reiss. Busy Lady Bakery. Graphite and ink on
paper, ca. 1919. Prints and Photograph Division, Library of Congress.
Gift of Tjark and Renate Reiss.
Figure #22. Winold Reiss Studios. Restaurant Longchamps,
Manhattan House, 53 Third Avenue. Graphite and tempera on paper,
1950. Collection of Tjark and Renate Reiss.
Figure #7. Winold Reiss. Interior Design Supplement, Modern Art
Collector (M.A.C.) (New York), vol. 1, no. 2, (October, 1915).
Figure #23. Winold Reiss Studios. Palm decoration, unidentified
restaurant. Graphite and tempera on paper, 1940s. Prints and
Photographs Division, Library of Congress. Gift of Tjark and Renate
Reiss.
Figure #8. Winold Reiss. A Modern Bakery, Modern Art Collector
(M.A.C.) (New York), vol. 1, no. 4, (December, 1915).
Figure #9. Winold Reiss. Restaurant Crillon. Tempera on paper, ca.
1919. Prints and Photograph Division, Library of Congress. Gift of
Tjark and Renate Reiss.
Figure #10. Winold Reiss. Alamac Hotel. Graphite and tempera on
paper, ca. 1923. Prints and Photograph Division, Library of Congress.
Gift of Tjark and Renate Reiss.
Figure #11. E. H. and G. G. Aschermann. dining room, Forest Hills,
Long Island, Modern Art Collector (M.A.C.) (New York), vol. 1, no.
4, (December, 1915).
Figure #12. Winold Reiss. Elevator cab, Shellball Apartments, Kew
Garden, Long Island. Graphite and tempera on paper, ca. 1928. Prints
and Photograph Division, Library of Congress. Gift of Tjark and
Renate Reiss.
Figure #13. Winold Reiss. Ironwork. Graphite and tempera on paper,
1920s. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress. Gift of
Tjark and Renate Reiss.
Figure #14. Winold Reiss. Dressing table. Graphite and tempera on
paper, 1920s. Collection of Tjark and Renate Reiss.
Figure #15. Winold Reiss. Ballroom, Hotel St. George, Brooklyn.
Photograph, ca. 1930. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of
Congress. Gift of Tjark and Renate Reiss.
Figure #16. Winold Reiss. Foyer, Ballroom, Hotel St. George,
Brooklyn. Photograph, ca. 1930. Prints and Photograph Division,
Library of Congress. Gift of Tjark and Renate Reiss.
Figure #17. Winold Reiss. Barricini candy box. Graphite and tempera
on paper, 1930s. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of
Congress. Deposit of Tjark and Renate Reiss.
Figure #24. Winold Reiss Studios. Chic-N-Coop Restaurant,
Montreal. Graphite and tempera on paper, February 1949. Collection
of Tjark and Renate Reiss.